Reap, Sow And Reave
by Spikey44
Summary: Reaver: before, after and forever. You reap what you sow and reave the consequences evermore. The true, mostly complete, confessions of a man made monster.
1. Foreword to greatness

**Reap, Sow and Reave**

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, but will use shamelessly anyway. _

_Foreword to greatness:_

Greetings and salutations to you, my dear reader! I commend you, my delightful and voyeuristic interloper, on successfully managing to get your grubby little mitts upon my diary. Congratulations on your cleverness, guile and ingenuity, or as it may be, well done on finding a savvy real estate agent, and having the hard cash to afford my marvellous Millfields abode – such a delightful view of the lake it boasts on a clear summer's day.

But I digress, alas the mind does tend to wander after all these centuries and I do so find the mundane triviality of everyday living awfully dull. In truth I find myself growing quite nostalgic for the days of yore when heroes were less sanctimonious and Albion was a younger, more naïve sort of place; hence the reason for this little compendium of my greatest and most seminal achievements.

For you see I find myself afflicted with an odd confessional itch, one that takes me every fifty years or so. I have lived such an interesting and eventful life and met so many interesting people that it becomes almost intolerable to keep such insights as I boast hidden away. It is quite the frightful burden really, there have been so many faces to pass before my eyes; so many little lives I have watched spark into existence and wink out again like will-o-the-wisps that they keep me up at night. Thus I find myself compelled to make a marriage of paper and ink and spill my words upon these pages.

It really is remarkable; all I have done to attain this long life of mine and sometimes it feels like such a millstone around my neck. I do so crave the opportunity to talk to someone who might possibly understand. Of course once I had unburdened myself regards my existential angst I would be forced to kill that person, I do so value my privacy after all, so I suppose it is as well I pen this little autobiographical work instead. There is a small chance in this regard my dear reader, that you should be so blessed with anonymity that I might never find you. So let us make a little pact, shall we? I shall pour across these pages the many faceted wonders and sordid little details of my life for your devouring eye and you, whoever you are, shall keep your trap shut about all you read here…or I will hunt you down and kill you.

Does that sound like a plan? Marvellous!

Well then, let us begin, yes? I believe introductions, while completely unnecessary in regards to my august self, are at the very least a traditional beginning to these sorts of things, and I do so like traditional things, so long as observing them does not inconvenience me in any fashion.

Where was I? Ah yes, I, dear reader, am Reaver. This interesting sobriquet is both a title and, I suppose one could say, a vocation...as you will soon discover. I have doffed many hats in my fascinating and well lived life, industrialist and entrepreneur, mayor and revered lord of Bloodstone, pirate and thief, renowned lover, and dapper chappie to name but a few of my past pursuits. Some have even referred to me as a hero, which I must confess while gratifying to the ego is nevertheless somewhat ironic all things considered. Then again, we are all the heroes of our own adventures, are we not?

I should warn you however before we go any further to beware of what scandal and daring-do shall stand revealed in these here pages. My tale, while enthralling and without parallel, is not for the faint of heart. As my former compeers in the pirating business used to say: _here be monsters_.

Now, let my story begin...


	2. For we all must begin somewhere

Chapter One: _for we must all begin somewhere_

Hello there, decided to join me for more did you? Of course you did, for who could resist such a scintillating and unprecedented opportunity to poke about into the nooks and crannies of a life far more interesting than your own. Unfortunately while I would love nothing more than to begin my tale with a ribald recreation of my last week long orgy at the old Bloodstone manor I'm afraid to say that one must follow one's own chronology and begin, alas, at the beginning. I apologise most profusely for the lack of any secret assignations with delightfully loose women and wonderfully caddish men, or even any good scraps in these next few paragraphs, but I assure you the juicy parts shall be all the more exquisite for having pushed through the dross.

Well in any regards let me set the scene; picture if you will a small farming village, rolling fallow fields, beasts of burden chewing cud peaceably while awaiting their date with the butcher's block, the scent of fresh cut hay on a warm and lazy summer breeze and meat pie cooling upon a nearby windowsill. There, do you have it? Tremendous! Now focus your inner eye's attention upon the mish-mash of thatched roofs, the chimney stacks and weathervanes twirling indolently and the stone steeple of the church rising into a cloudless powder blue sky above the rest of the village. You will hear the sounds of small children playing outside with bat and ball, kicking up little clouds of dust upon the beaten earth roads while good housewives peg up washing to line dry, and honeysuckle crawls over a moss eaten stone wall joining one house to another like a masonry artery throughout the town.

This is the town of Oakvale as it was some two hundred and fifty years ago.

Ah but this is fun, is it not? We are becoming such devious little voyeurs into mine own memory aren't we? What a delicious violation this confessional treatise is proving to be. I had thought I had forgotten Oakvale while it lived, but now I find that I can all but smell it. What a cruel tool memory is. But I digress again, how terribly remiss of me. Right then, let us turn our focus further inward, shall we? Much as one might focus the sights of a rifle I would bid you, dear reader, to zero in upon this marvellous mental vista I have recreated for you and look upon the rectory.

Right there, see it? That rather humble abode wedged in at the back of the church, set amid all those…delightful…tombstones? That's the place: the rectory. The place I once called home. Yes, my dear reader, you have read that right, I was once the son of a priest. The irony still gives me a shiver of debauched glee even now. The fact that I also grew up in a house set within the grounds of a cemetery does not however. Oh how I hated that house and that bloody graveyard…hmm but I believe we have reached a sufficient point to leap headfirst into this narrative, haven't we?

So let us begin at the beginning, which could so very easily have been my premature end.

On this particular day, which for the sake of a coherent tale I have decided shall stand as the beginning, there is a poor young boy, a puny lad of some ten or eleven years, trussed up in bed and grey as death under thin sheets. By his bedside sits his mother her bitten nails clawing at her skirts as she sits on a stool and watches each laboured breath her boy fights to draw in. Her eyes are dry but red, she has been in this position before, many times, and no doubt she is wondering if this will be the last time she watches, scant able to breathe herself, as her weak and sickly boy struggles to keep breathing.

This child is weak, you see, he is weak and wretched and utterly pathetic. He has spent almost half his life an invalid as his lungs do not work as they should. He cannot run about and chase a ball as the other village boys do because he is so very, very weak. He coughs and his lungs cave in, burning and choking him and he begins to suffocate. His eyes bulge, his lips grow blue and his fingers rake the bed clothes as he fights for life and begins to wish for death. Panic erupts in his veins, hot like fire and his vision shatters into weird and wild dancing specks of endless black. He fancies that death's grim visage leers at him from the corners of the room as his mother reaches for him, her voice the pure tone of helplessness.

"Joshua, Joshua _breathe_; you must breathe."

Always she implores the boy thus, as if he is not fighting tooth and claw to do just that. It is in these moments when death is before his eyes and terror thunders in his heart that the boy hates his mother, hates her for the cruel advent of his birth, hates her for lacking the power to make him well and hates her for being the only thing in his miserable existence to make life worth the fight. He clings to her hands, which flutter when loose like pale moths, and with herculean effort drags in one whooping breath after another. He clings to his mother and refuses to look anywhere but into her wet green eyes; she is his compass, his fragile harbour in a sea of pain and fear. The boy will live another day but death will be waiting for him on the morrow.

"Mam…it hurts." The weak child mewls as he always does after these moments and the mother, green eyes swimming, gathers her boy, all knobbly spine and heaving chest, to her bosom like a bundle of old rags.

"Shush," she soothes rocking them both for they are equally lost at sea, "rest now and I will make you something nice for tea." Then the mother leaves the boy, rising from the bed after first plumping the sweat soaked pillows in a futile attempt to make the child more comfortable. She retreats to the kitchen where she can cry unwatched, little realising that the boy can hear her every sob. He knows that she is not simply sobbing for his plight but her own. There are only so many times a mother can watch her child almost die, and suffer so for each extra day wrested from death, before she begins to wish the fight over simply for the closure. The boy, his body aching and his atrophied muscles burning from oxygen deprivation knows that at least a part of his mother wishes him dead.

Life for this boy is a very sorry existence indeed.

The boy will spend the rest of the day in bed, watching the clouds pass across the faultless sky while lying prone upon sweat starched sheets. He will hear the lark sing in the trees and the laughter of the other children as they run around joyous in their sturdy young bodies and whooping at the top of their healthy lungs. He hates the lark and those children so very much. They don't know how lucky they are. Yet the boy knows that jealousy is a sin in the eyes of Avo, his father has told him so. His father has also told him that sickness is visited upon the living to test the soul. For this reason the boy also hates Avo. He feels that he and his soul alike would be very happy, thank you, without such a test being visited upon him.

All the same, everyday the boy prays to Avo that the deity will find the time, amid the obviously arduous task of floating around all ethereal like while being revered by the rest of mankind, to heal him of his sickness and also to see fit to ask his father to visit him while he languishes alone in his bed. Avo has so far failed to acknowledge his fervent requests. The boy remains sick and his father remains absent. Father Terrence is alive, as far as the boy can deduce (he is fairly confident his mother would inform him should his father have succumbed to his mortality before his son) but the man does not come to his son's sickroom to wish him well. The boy knows why and he does not entirely blame his father. Father Terrence abhors death and fears the sick. The fact that he lives in a graveyard is perhaps partly responsible for this aversion, though disappointment that the only fruit of his loins should be such a weak and wretched thing has likely also played a pivotal role in fostering this neurosis.

Father Terrence is a miserable weak little man. It is no wonder his son should prove equally pathetic.

Aside from his mother there is but one other regular visitor to the boy's sick room; his uncle Stanley. Stan-the-man, as he is colourfully entitled by the rest of the village, is his mother's brother and, in the eyes of this sickly child confined as he is to watch life pass him by, could very well have been responsible for hanging the moon upon the night's sky.

"A'ight there Josh m'boy?" Stan bounds into the little room, a man of ill-fitted grace and too much liveliness, eyes alight and furtive with a cock-eyed mixture of ebullient good will and native mischief. The man's mildly moronic grin slips into something softer, hinting at that most hated of emotions – pity – as he looks over the boy in the bed however. "Well yer lookin' right pasty t'day, ain't yer lad?" Stan reaches over to ruffle the boy's hair and the child slaps his hand away.

"…I'm…not," he huffs voice creaky as an old gate from lack of use, "pasty." He glares weakly, for he does everything weakly and Stan chuckles rubbing the back of the hand the boy slapped away.

"Well yer reflexes are still sharp as ever, that's for sure." Stan shook his head. "Din't even _see_ yer hand move that time."

There is a moment's silence as the boy wheezes like a bellows, his one exertion taking its toll on his wasted body and his uncle watches him with ill-veiled sympathy. The boy tries hard not to hate his uncle for that look because he does not want to have to half hate everyone he knows; such a fate would make his life completely unbearable and it is hardly a barrel of laughs as is.

"Here," Stan moves suddenly dropping a cloth wrapped bundle into the boy's lap. "Got yer a present," Stan grins vulpine and loose lipped revealing yellowed teeth as disordered as the tombstones dotting the grounds beyond the boy's window, "Figured this'd be summat you could play wit' right here in bed."

"A…present…!" The boy likes presents. Fumbling fingers tear at the cloth wrap, which is little more than a swathe cut from a burlap sack. His eyes widen to behold what lay revealed thereafter. "This is…" a fit of coughing chokes to death the rest of his utterance but the boy does not let this deter him. His hands shake as he fondles the simple toy crossbow with reverent care. Sunken and faded green eyes lift to fix upon Stan in awe and stuttered hope. "This is my present? You're giving this to me, uncle?"

"Yep," his uncle laughs, "It comes wit' a bunch of little shot bolts too, see?" The man's huge fingers dwarf the thin slivers of wood as he places one into the crossbow mechanism. "Yer can use matchsticks as well, figure they'll fit nice and snug in here." He grins at the boy. "Give it a go."

The boy frowns and looks around his tiny prison of a sickroom, "What should I aim at?"

"Oh yeah...right," Stan scratches the back of his sunburned neck in abashment and lumbers to his feet, capering like a scarecrow across the room to unfurl a rolled piece of paper with an archery target drawn upon it. Deftly the boy's uncle tacks the target to the far wall by the window and turns back to his nephew with another endearingly gormless grin. "See how close to the target yer can hit."

The boy frowns. He is a bed-bound sickly scrap of flesh, his arm shakes simply from the effort of holding the toy crossbow aloft, his vision swims as he attempts to sight down the curve of the toy weapon, yet as he squints at that target, a glorious ring of painted fire, something ignites behind his eyes and an answering fire kindles in his belly. He pulls back the mechanism, he sights, and he releases the bolt...and all the while his heart labours, lodged tight in his throat. The flimsy matchstick bolt flies through the air, singing as it slices in twain the stale atmosphere so omnipresent in this damnable sickroom and strikes right through the centre of the target, rupturing the paper.

"...Bullseye!" Stan crows pumping a fist in the air, "Aye-up lad, yer good at this lark, ain't yer?"

The boy laughs, for the first time in too long. He is enraptured, euphoric; his heart would sing if such an organ was designed to do such a thing. "I did it! I hit it."

"Bleedin' right yer did, Josh m'boy." Stan bounces back across the room, "Did yer hear the noise that thing made when you let it loose, eh?" He laughed and flopped back down onto the stool, his long spindly legs all sharp angles and too long lengths, his knobbly elbows propped on his knees. He is smiling at the boy but for once the attention starved mite does not notice for the boy himself is too busy staring down at the toy crossbow in his lap.

"It sang, uncle." The boy whispered. "When I fired that bolt, it sang to me. I heard it." Trembling fingers lift the toy, such a simple flimsy construct of drift wood and twine. "It was like I could cut through the air itself and make it sing for me."

Stan laughs and laughs some more when the child rearms the crossbow, eyes bright as he squints down the length at the torn target across the room. He fires again, and once more the paper is stabbed through the centre, the second bolt striking the first and sending both broken sticks to the floor in pieces.

"Bloody hell, that was clever." Stan blinks but cannot make further exclamation before the crossbow is fired again. The boy is laughing, shaking with joy as he fires off bolt after bolt until the paper target is riddled with holes.

"Bang, bang, bang!" The boy cries in joy laughing so hard his mother comes running.

"What the buggery is goin' on in 'ere?" The boy's mother is ready for anger, but her ire is forgotten when she sees the smile on her sickly lad's pallid face.

"Mother!" The boy exclaims, "Mother look what uncle has given me!" The boy brandishes the crossbow proudly. "Mother, watch me shoot...I am the best shot alive!"


	3. Unexpected bastardy

Chapter two: _Unexpected Bastardy _

Bonjour mon ami! I have returned once more, my dear reader, aren't you glad? But of course you are, for no doubt you have been in apoplexy, all fingers and thumbs and sweaty brows as you fumble to turn the page and find out what happens next, am I right?

Ah but I have been busy lately and have found that reminiscence must wait. There has been a spot of bother in Industrial. Our dear king Logan has been a rather foolish dolt and let his sister run off to ferment rebellion, which in itself is of no concern to me. I have seen my share of monarchs and rebels come and go, after all. Still to my not inconsiderable annoyance I find that the little madam has seen fit to come and rain upon my parade. Really, it is intolerable. Can a man not run a business empire in peace without idealistic little mavens running hither and thither spreading such lies as equality and freedom to my army of cowed wage slaves? I ask you, what is Albion coming to? A man might think the daft little bint has failed to realise that gold does not grow on trees but instead must be extracted from the blood, sweat and tears of the great mass of unwashed. Off with the little princess' head, I say. Alas Logan remains ridiculously fond of his sibling and will insist on complicating our lives by indulging this pointless and costly rebellion.

C'est le vie, I suppose I shall just have to wait and see. These are the children of my dear friend Sparrow after all. No doubt there are all manner of world saving machinations afoot. I shall just have to endeavour to ensure I am around to profit from it all when this mess resolves itself.

But! This is not what you wish to read about is it, my dearest reader. Of course it is not; such matters as the fate of a kingdom pale into insignificance in comparison to the grand tale of my own origin. Ah and we are getting to a good part too. Yes indeed. Upon perusing my last entry it would seem that we have reached a rather pivotal point in my tale and can now begin in earnest.

So without further ado let us once more peel back the lacquered layers of years piled upon years and return to Oakvale and that puny little lad with his toy crossbow...

In Oakvale the green and golden glow of summer has begun to ebb into the tired burnished hues of autumn already and the spectre of dark chill nights haunts the long shadows of late afternoon. The first frost has fallen and Oakvale prepares itself for a long and wearying winter to come.

The boy Joshua fears the coming of winter as he fears little else. The rectory is always cold, the heath fire unable to banish the damp chill from the corners of the stone hewn room and that chill settles as an invisible weight upon the boy's weak chest. At this particular juncture of time the boy is once again in his bed all but smothered under a snowdrift of blankets and still the chill of the season makes its clammy presence felt. He is feverish and each breath he takes rasps from his raw throat like fire and wood splinters.

Yet today is a special day! His father has deigned it fit to sit with him, a grim revenant of a man, old before his years, with open prayer book settled on his lap, perched like an ugly carrion crow upon the stool. He reads aloud the prayer for the dying in a dull monotone voice, not once looking up from the yellowed pages of the tattered book to lay eyes upon his son.

"...And Avo said unto her flock, be you weak and meek I shall shepherd you to the land of plenty. And thus it was that the sick knew surcease from suffering and..."

"Father," the boy rasps, fingers curling fitfully in the folds of his multiple bed sheets. Outside his bedroom window the cold yet beautiful autumn sun peers in at him, her light worming around the skeletal fingers of a leafless oak tree. A fat, self satisfied raven perches upon one such branch, cawing his freedom loudly. Under the convenient covering of blankets the boy's left hand caresses the curve of his toy crossbow, fingers itching for the trigger.

"...and the poor lay down their burdens and knew the eternal joy of the incorporeal and all was..." Father Terrence continued droning on reciting his sermon as if his child really was dead and in need of last rites. The window is closed tight against the draft and the boy's eyes narrow dangerously as the damned raven, such an ill-omened bird, shows the great audacity to come to perch upon the outer sill. Its liquid black eye winks at him from the safety of the great outside. This will not do at all.

"_Father_!" The boy raises his voice, surprisingly strident, but alas, there are only so many times a boy with such a thirst for life can listen in meek subservience as his father extols the virtues of the afterlife with the oratory verve and enthusiasm of a walking corpse. Father Terrence pauses mid-dirge as his son wrests a small hand from the confines of his blankets and grasps upon the sleeve of his priestly robes. The man blinks rheumy eyes, pale as a robin's egg, and frowns.

"You must not interrupt me, child. I am shriving for your soul." Father Terrence plucks his son's fingers from his sleeve and finally looks his boy in the eyes. What he sees reflected there is anyone's guess but whatever it is proves enough to cause the man to take notice of his son's corporeal needs and leave his soul in peace for once. "What is it?"

The boy's eyes dart from the window and that blasted bird before whizzing back to his father in a lightning fast dance, his nimble little mind forming the rudiments of a plan. "Water," the boy croaks needing to put no effort whatsoever into sounding feeble, "Please father can you get me some water?"

Father Terrence is not a particularly amenable man but he is not a complete monster either, snapping his prayer book closed he rises grumbling from the stool and turns for the door. In an instant the boy has whipped the crossbow out from under the sheets, snagged the big silver nail from under his pillow and loaded it into the toy. His father has barely closed the bedroom door behind him and shuffled off with great solemnity towards the spigot in the back garden before the boy has fired the nail bolt, his aim focused with dead eye intensity upon that damned ugly bird perched upon his windowsill.

_Ark! _The window glass shatters with a barely audible crunch as the nail punches through it to pierce the raven through its vicious and laughing dark eye. The bird screams as the nail skewers its tiny brain and feathers fly through the air as nail and bird continue along a predetermined path to hit the bark of an apple tree some ten yards beyond the window. The boy watches as the bird twitches in its death throes before gravity sees fit to pull nail and bird free of the tree trunk. The nasty creature lands with a thump and a further moulting of greasy black feathers upon the browned and frosted ground.

"A hit," the boy chuckles, "Got you, you bloody thing."

Carefully the boy slips the crossbow back under the sheets, checks to make sure the rest of his cache of silver nails is secure under his pillow and then pulls forth from inside the pillow case the nub of pencil and the scrap of paper torn from the flyleaf of the prayer book his father gifted him last year but from which he has never willing read. There upon this treasures scrap of paper he adds a new entry to his tally of successfully hit targets. So far, in the few scant few months since his uncle bought him the toy, he has shot forty-nine cockroaches, seventeen mice, three rats and crippled the neighbours' cat with a nail up the arse. Now he can add the raven to his count. He gives himself extra points for the difficulty of the shot, especially as he had to fire through a glass pane to get to the blighter.

Life is a funny thing, as the boy tucks away his precious score sheet his chest is still tight, his skin still damp and itchy from fever sweat, and his muscles still burn from the sheer exhaustion of pervasive sickness, yet in this brief moment of triumph the boy does not feel any of this. In his veins sings the euphoria of his success, his mind aflame with the glorious secret of his own talent. He does not need to be told to know that when he wields his crossbow he becomes, not a tired, wretched child not long for this world, but instead master of life and death. Diseased, haunted by the greedy phantom of the Reaper, this young child is so much closer to grasping a fundamental tenet of life than his pious father could ever hope to be.

The true splendour of living can only be found when extinguishing the life of others.

Still such existential truths remain just beyond the boy's comprehension at this point; it will take many a long year before this boy will embrace the ultimate nihilism of existence fully, and for the moment he is just a child with a new toy.

Just a boy with a new toy...ha, but that is a truth most profound, isn't it?

Suffice to say for the benefits of a pithy narrative that a number of weeks pass by in much the same vein as we have seen. During the day the boy continues to hone his marksmanship in relative secrecy (the infestation of vermin seeking sanctuary from the cold proving to be a blessing in surprise) and at night he sleeps poorly, lungs drowning in a build up of vile fluids no amount of retching heaves can dislodge. The winter inches closer, autumn succumbing to the indigo and grey of this most barren of seasons.

It is on one of these very days, cold and bleak and brittle that the boy huddles in his blankets, chest ablaze, shaking with fever sweats and mewling for release while his mother sits at his bedside mopping his brow and his dear beloved uncle lounges by the window.

"Ah my poor little mite, shh, rest now." The mother, Ginger by name and hair colour, strokes cold fingertips over her son's fever burned cheek watching as his sunken eyes slip closed. Thinking the poor tyke has already faded away into dreams Ginger presses roughened palms to her eyes and scrubs away more dry tears.

"He'll not see spring, Stan." She whispers. "My baby won't make it."

Stan ambles over and slings an arm over his sister's bony shoulders. "Hey now, he's got through worse than this before, ain't he? He's tougher than he looks, Ginny, you see if he ain't."

"I can't...I can't do this anymore Stan!" Ginger shoves her brother's solicitous arm off her shoulders and rises from the stool, crossing the room to the window (boarded up as glass panes are not easy to replace). She hugs her thin arms close to her chest, grasping her elbows through the thin, worn homespun of her sleeves. "Terry says I'm bein' punished. 'E says Josh is sick 'cuz o' the scallywags I used to pal around wit'. Avo's punishing me fer m'wickedness by killin' m'boy wit' this bloody disease."

Peering through his eyelashes the boy in the bed watches as his uncle's broad and open features contract in an uncharacteristic display of annoyance, "Ginny, luv, Terry's an arse. Always was, always will be." He scoffed and shook his head ruefully. "Never did understand why you married the miserable sod in the first place."

Ginger spun around and her tired, pale and washed out face is suddenly transformed by virtue of anger into something vibrant and alive. The faded ghost of lost youth and beauty can be seen for just a moment in the fire sparking in her eyes. "You know why I married him yer daft git! I 'ad to; not like I could o' made ends meet when I was up the duff and wit' out a man, was it now?"

In the bed the boy is suddenly very still. His heart hammers with that particular fission that comes only from eavesdropping on a conversation he should not be hearing. The very air of his little room is thick with secrets and hidden truths, he can all but smell it, and a strange quiver of excitement builds within him, a warm glow quite different from the dry, aching heat of his fever. He waits, breathless with anticipation instead of sickness for once, for his mother's next words.

"A'ight, luv," Stan holds his hands up placatingly, "I know." He waits, as the boy does, for Ginger's shoulders to drop and that lovely flame of passion to fade back into the embers of exhaustion that have become habitual for this woman. "It's just...ah, Ginny, yer know I'd'a put yer and yer baby up if I'd known. You coulda waited and married a man who treated yer right, instead of a sour old trout like Terry."

Ginger laughed mirthlessly and turned from the window to pace the confines of the small room with all the wild rangy grace and inherent violence of a balverine in a cage. "Yer weren't 'ere then, bruv. Terry was, Avo curse him." Finally Ginger has paced back to the stool by the bed wherein she sinks back down with broken grace, tugging on a stringy lock of once luscious red hair that has escaped the ugly bonnet she wears upon her head even indoors. When she speaks again it is with resignation. "Yer know Terry had a soft spot fer me before I ran off t'tag along wit' Andy an' 'is gang. 'E was sweet at t'beginnin', I guess, an' he really ain't bad wit' Josh...seein' as m'boy ain't even his son an' all."

"Not his son?" The boy in the bed's eyes pop open and suddenly all weakness is forgotten in the face of this most unexpected revelation. Shadowed green eyes, grown huge with shock, fix on his mother's. Ginger's face flushes ashen white as she realises her mistake. The boy reaches for her. "Mam...is father not really my father?"

"Oh Avo save me," Ginger all but yelps jumping up and knocking over the stool, "Yer s'posed t'be asleep, yer sneaky little wretch!" Bursting into tears Ginger flew from the room, wringing her hands. In the sudden silence that follows the sound of the front door slamming seems very loud. The boy turns his wide eyes from the empty space once occupied by his mother to stare, beseechingly, at his uncle.

"Uncle Stan?" the boy's voice quivers, "Is my Da not my real da then?"

Rubbing the back of his neck fiercely his uncle stares fixedly at the flagstone floor for what seems an agonisingly long time. "Uncle?" the boy leaned forward in bed, struggling to sit up against his pillows.

"Aye lad," Stan finally sighed lifting his eyes very slowly from the floor and his own shuffling feet, "I s'pose the cat's out t'bag now, eh?" He smiled ruefully, "Terry, Father Terrence, 'e ain't yer da, Josh m'boy."

The boy can barely comprehend it. His mind conjures the image of Father Terrence before his eyes. He sees again the dour face, the forbidding brow, the sound of that dull, dull voice droning on from the pulpit and the dinner table alike. He thinks again about the man's remarkable ability to suck the life and joy from all he meets. The boy does not know quite how to feel to discover that there is no great bond of blood and paternity between that grim man and himself after all. Obscurely and for a reason he will come to recognise in time is in fact profound relief, the boy begins to giggle. Yet there is one question that he must have answered before he can indulge in the joyous freedom of the soul that this revelation has granted him.

"Who...whose son am I, then?"

Stan's expression creases in an odd mixture of trepidation and some other tincture of emotion the boy cannot identify. "A bandit, lad," His uncle shakes his head mournfully his gaze returning to the safe haven of the floor, "Ah, Josh lad, yer the son of t'leader of the Bloodstone bandits, that's who yer are."


	4. Bandits and a spot of eye gouging

Chapter three: _Bandits and a spot of eye gouging_

I dreamed again last night, such a dreadfully vivid dream. I dreamed of the Wraithmarsh. I dreamed the banshee that roam the wastes and bogs with the ill-grace and cackling madness of the worst and most pitiable derelict wore my mother's face. I dreamed of the day Oakvale ceased to be.

Once I would call such ghastly nocturnal visions nightmares, but can memory truly be nightmare? I wonder as I sip upon a fine aperitif and warm myself by the fire in my grand parlour if the horror has lost its lustre. Is it possible I have finally grown tired of my lingering guilt? Wraithmarsh has been a blot on the landscape for so long that most of Albion has forgotten what the land was once like. Does this absolve me of responsibility, perchance? Is a man still culpable when no one alive remembers his crimes? Do I even require absolution, I wonder. There is no one left alive to hold me accountable for my choices. Sparrow took my secret to her grave, such a peculiarly noble soul, and not even her offspring know my story. So I wonder, I truly do wonder, what it is that keeps me up at night, unable to draw breath much like that long ago child centuries forgotten.

Enough of this nonsense; I am well past such maudlin twaddle. I live, I thrive, and I…endure. That is enough. It _is_ enough, blast you. I am Reaver and I regret nothing. I will exorcise my ghosts upon the pages of this book and finally rid myself of them once and for all.

Yet I am so dreadfully tired; let us dispense with preliminaries and jump right back to our narrative, shall we?

Oakvale is caught in the chapped palm of mid-winter as we turn back time with the negligent ease of indolent gods. The night is dark and empty. The fresh snow fall blanketing the fields and quilting the roofs gains a sharp, cracking patina of frost as the naked stars peer down upon a midnight sleeping town. All is quiet under a veil of seeming tranquillity. Yet the jackals are never far from the flock.

Our sickly protagonist, young Joshua, is still just about alive despite the dire proclamations of his high-strung mother. His health has improved not a jot, but he has at least failed to decline any further. This is a source of some pride for the child, who considers every breath a minor victory in his ongoing battle against encroaching fatality. He is also greatly heartened by the revelation of his true paternity and has taken it upon himself to beg, plead, and cajole his uncle for any further details regarding his dastardly father, Andy of the Bloodstone Gang.

So far his uncle has been considerably less than obliging and his mother tends to become hysterical at the mere mention of that rag-tag band of mercenaries lurking by the ragged coastland some twenty miles from Oakvale. In between coughing blood and mild asphyxiation the boy has decided that something must be done about these adults. He will have his answers one way or the other, this he swears to himself.

Still on this particular night fate has conspired, as it will do throughout the lad's eventful life, to offer up some unexpected excitement. He is woken from a fitful and disturbed slumber by the sound of shattering glass and cracking wood. Sheer fright gives him the strength to sit bolt upright in his bed, the little toy crossbow miraculously finding its way to his hand in less time than it takes to tell of it. Beyond his bedroom door he hears his mother scream. The boy is out of the bed in a shot, swaying on his two feet from vertigo as he is not used to standing.

"The church!" The boy hears father Terrence rush by his bedroom door, "There are bandits in the church." Following this exclamation there is a pattering thunder of feet and his mother's voice, shrill with rising panic chases her husband's footsteps.

"Terry, Terry yer ruddy arse, ferget the church – don't let 'em know we 'ere!"

The boy is bare foot and dressed in nowt but his nightclothes, the toy crossbow gripped tight in one hand and a fistful of shiny silver nails in the other. Distant but growing ever louder he can hear the chaotic symphony of destruction. The acrid scent of burning pervades his nostrils though he knows not how. Beyond the flimsy confines of the rectory the peaceful world of Oakvale has descended into madness.

"Joshua!"

The door to his bedroom is flung open and his mother bursts in. She is a whirling dervish of loose red hair, tired cotton nightdress and worn slippers. She swoops upon her only son as a hawk swoops down on a field mouse and suddenly he is swung up off his feet, carried like a babe in his mother's arms as she runs towards the front door of the rectory.

"Mother…what…!" Whether due to the excitement of the moment or the crushing strength of his mother's arms it is difficult to tell but the boy is struggling to find breath for speech. His mother drops him back to his own two feet on the cold flagstones of the kitchen as she wrenches open the front door to peer outside. In that moment the woman known as Ginger, or simply mother, undergoes a metamorphosis most profound, she is transformed from nervous, anxious country mouse to fearsome she-wolf standing guard over her cub. In her hand she clasps an eight inch breadknife like she knows how to use it and the sickly glow of fire limns her silhouette as sparks fall like snow in the darkness beyond her questing gaze. Father Terrence is nowhere in sight.

"Stupid man, the church's on fire an' there's nowt he can do f'it now," Ginger shakes her head, eyes skimming the darkness keenly. "Right glad I am that Stan's out o' town; bloody bandits."

"…Bandits?" perking up considerably the boy creeps closer to his mother, even though the smoke of the numerous small fires sprouting from the thatched roofs of the neighbourhood houses and the brilliant cold of the night hits his lungs like a physical blow. The boy huddles closer to his mother. "Mother is it the Bloodstone Gang?"

Ginger does not bother to look back, but her eyes narrow dangerously, "It better bloody not be. I'll rip Andy's balls off wit' my own hands if it is."

This is a fascinating prospect, and the boy is still so captivated by the disturbing visuals evoked by such bloodthirsty declarations that he is startled to the point of heart palpitation when his mother grasps his arm and yanks him forward into the night. "Quick we'll hide in the old Barnaby crypt 'til it's over."

Running through the snow is an experience. The boy can barely walk without wheezing yet now he runs, dragged along like the runty tail of his mother's blazing comet. The snow is shockingly cruel under his bare feet and the ice grasps at his soles, pricking away tender flesh in frigid kisses of biting chill. The night sky is lit from beneath by the grasping tendrils of flame that claw and chase their way up the church's once proud spire and for a moment all the lad can do is turn his face up to that inferno, the heat of which scorches him yards away, in wonder. Had he time to think about his situation the boy would no doubt be quite afraid but in that moment, that glorious moment of panic and heartrending strife it feels as though something in his soul has torn free of tired bondage and now strains for that blistering light of destruction in the same manner desperate souls pine for salvation.

"Joshua!" His mother's voice, sharp as an eagle's cry, jerks him from his dazed wonderment in an instance. He turns wide eyes back to his mother and there is another frozen moment wherein the sight of his mother beckoning to him, arm outstretched as she stands by the open door of an ivy shrouded mausoleum will be forever indelibly etched upon his memory. Then time resumes its mad march forward and a lanky shadow seeps from the greater dark of the cemetery to coalesce right behind his mother.

"'Ello Luv, tryin' t'hide were yer?" An unkempt man, sallow face scarred and pockmarked, reeking of bad ale and blood grabs hold of Ginger from behind, large grubby hands rasping over her skinny hips before flying upward to grope her breasts. "Yer an' me are gunna 'ave some fun." He leers into her ear and his snaggleteeth gleam sickly yellow black in the light of the burning church.

"Ge' off me," Ginger tries to twist around and plunge the breadknife into soft bandit flesh, but the man is too quick for her, he grabs her wrist and twists and the knife is suddenly angled for her own body.

"Shouldn' a dun dat girlie," the bandit is still grinning cruelly as he bears down on Ginger, who struggles in vain, "Gotta kill yer now."

"Mother!"

It is all over in the blinking of an eye, and ever after the boy will never be able to recall the correct sequence of events. It happened that blasted fast. All the same he will remember the firelight glinting on the notched edge of the knife and the look of despairing outrage on his mother's face as she is driven to her knees, the blade arcing downward. He will remember also the almost comical look of total surprise that blossomed upon the brigand's face when blood, black as pitch, burst forth from his ruptured eye socket, now sporting the addition of a rather shiny nail.

"Aghhh!" The bandit went reeling backward, dropping the knife, both hands clawing at his eyes.

"Get away from my mother, you bastard!"

P-tow, the sound of the toy crossbow unleashing another bolt is quite unlike anything else, and then there is a nail embedded through the bandit's ugly paw, the same hideous mitt that had been groping for his mother's fallen knife in the snow.

"Joshua!" Ginger dives forward, scrambling over the snow towards her child, who stands firm in the cold, his hands moving in a blur. The bandit lurches forward, snarling incoherently, only to be knocked back as another nail finds a home in his one remaining eye. The man screams like a beast at bay, and falls to his knees, blood and thicker liquids oozing around his fingers, the palms of his hands clamped to his face as if he sought to keep his splattered eyeballs in their sockets by holding them there.

For the little lad Joshua it seems as though time itself stands still. Where there was darkness and tiger stripped fire shadow before, now there is perfect clarity. He sees more clearly now, amid the snow and ash flurries than he has ever seen. He can hear the sobbing rasps of the brigand's pained breathing, his mother's voice echoing strangely in his ears and the glorious thunder of his own heartbeat, strong and proud for the very first time. P-tow, p-tow, p-tow; he fires consecutive nails from his toy so fast he breaks the mechanism on the last shot, not that it matters. The nails fly through the air, harbingers of this man's doom, to strike right through his palms even as the man seeks to shield his face. Another howl erupts from the man as his hands are skewered to his face by three inch nails and when he opens his mouth wide on that last yowl of pain the third and final nail flies right inside that gaping maw and pops out the other side.

The man falls face first into the snow, twitching and writhing, while he gargles in his own blood.

"Sweet Avo's knickers," Ginger gapes at her son as the boy pokes at his broken toy and pouts. Neither mother nor child pay any mind to the blood staining the snow black at their feet. The roar of breaking timber and flame shudders through the air as the roof of the church collapses in on itself and sparks light the sky many feet into the air. Ginger grabs up her knife and kicks the bandit's body over.

"Yer got what was comin' t'yer." Kneeling she went about the grizzly task of pulling loose the nails from the corpse, wiping bits of viscera off the points onto her nightdress. "Here, come take yer nails. We might need 'em."

"Mother where are we going?" Dragged along at his mother's heels once more, the little lad of our tale looks back confusedly at the crypt. "I thought…"

"Don't be daft," his mother snaps quickly still scanning the darkness with eye straining intensity, "That tomb won't be much good as a hidin' place wit' a body lyin' in front of it. The snow's all bloody too, can't hide that." Ginger squeezed her son's hand, "We'll try to get clear o' the village through the back woods."

The rush of the kill ebbing away rapidly the boy stumbles along after his mother, breath laboured, lungs on fire, vision erupting into irritating blue and yellow speckles from oxygen depletion and exhaustion. When he slips on a patch of frost and near falls face first into a rotted woodpile at the back of the cemetery it becomes painfully apparent that escape is an unattainable dream.

"Josh, sweetheart, yer have to get up." Ginger is cold, shaking, frightened. She can barely feel her own fingers and toes and her heart twists into a knot lodged in her throat when her child begins to retch blood, his whooping coughs loud as thunderclaps in the silence of the cemetery. She drops to her knees in the snow and gathers her boy to her, wiping the blood and sputum from bloodless blue lips. "You mustn't fall asleep, sweetheart, not out 'ere."

"…Chest…hurt…mam…" the boy chokes back more bloody coughs and Ginger begins to rock them both, rubbing his back firmly. She closes her eyes and does not pray for she knows the gods don't care for simple folk like them. Through the graveyard she can see the red winking eyes of torchlight and the loud tramping of bandit boots on snow coming towards them. Her hand clenches on her knife. Better than most Ginger knows exactly what happens in a bandit raid. She's already borne one bandit bastard and she'll not let another bandit touch her; she'll die first. Looking down on her son, never strong and never like to survive she wonders if it would be mercy to slit his throat now and save him from the bandits. The thought is fleeting; she would no more kill her child here than smother him with a pillow in his bed.

"Oh Joshua, I wanted better fer yer then this." Her child does not answer her; he is already deep glazed within the darkness of hypothermic dreams. The bandits are closing in, capering like phantoms amid the gravestones, haloed in hellfire red flame courtesy of their torches.

"Oi, Rodder's where are yer?" One voice caterwauls from the left.

"Rod – Neeeeyyyyyyy!" Another bellows very close by and just down wind.

"What the bleedin'…!" A final voice down by the Barnaby mausoleum cuts through the night. "Oi, boys come and look at this. Rodder's is mincemeat."

Ginger sucks in a quick breath. One of the bandit's is so close she can hear his loud breathing and the crackle-hiss of snow melting as it hits the flames of his torch. As the bandit turns to amble back towards the Barnaby tomb Ginger makes a decision, hardly a wise one but then again mothers with children to protect are rarely wise. After all when one considers the crushing poverty, disease and danger of this world in which many women chose to rear their young one must assume that logic and maternal instinct are distinctly mutually exclusive.

In fact it is really remarkable all things considered that the population of Albion has not dwindled to nothing centuries ago. Certainly for the vast majority of people there is precious little profit to be had in their short, miserable little lives. Ah well one poor sod's misfortune is simply an opportunity to exploit, as I always say.

But enough of this idle musing, back in the moment of Ginger makes her move. Abandoning her boy, she throws herself, knife at the ready, at the back of the departing bandit, emitting as she does so a rather impressive bloodthirsty roar.

"Die you bastard!"

The bandit whirls on his heels just in time to have an eight inch breadknife rammed into his left eye, and deeper still into his brain; as the old idiom goes, like mother like son. There is nothing better to unite a family than blinding one's foes in a most painful manner.


	5. Death and desolation in a boneyard

Chapter four: _Death and desolation in a boneyard_

Salutations to you my dear reader! Something quite intriguing occurred the other night. I had a bit of a bash, you see, a little soiree for some rather hirsute acquaintances of mine; somewhat boorish by my usual tastes, these particular individuals of note, but they were _quite_ insistent that I owed them…well, let me just say that had I been forced to deliver upon the price these delightful associates demanded of my august self, I would have been in something of a pickle. Eternal youth loses its lustre somewhat when one is no longer in possession of all his limbs.

Ha! As it happened, I was able to offer my unexpected but well received guests a rather fine alternative…some annoying little vermin from the sewers of my marvellous Industrial domain had seen fit to invade my Millfields sanctum. Useless beggars could not sneak up on a corpse of course and even dear, stupid Barry was able to catch and cage the blighters. I was just deciding what to do with the wretches when my "guests" arrived. It all worked out rather nicely actually, for as it transpired my guests were not as discerning as I initially assumed. Apparently one man tastes much like another when one happens to be a ravenous metamorphic killer. In truth I am a little affronted by the notion that my own immaculate flesh should be compared to that of those measly rebels, but I suppose I should be grateful my darling guests lacked the refinement to differentiate between true quality and proletariat trash.

Anyway, the reason I am relaying this little anecdote to you my dear reader, is due to what happened after my bestial guests had glutted themselves on all but one of the rebels. Naturally sensing that keeping a ready supply of bodies on hand, should my guests become a bit peckish later on, would be a capital idea I sent word to my usual cohort that I was holding a masque. In no time at all I had a hundred wonderfully vacuous and alcohol incapacitated human entrees littering my mansion. Still I was just beginning to negotiate with my homicidally inclined guests of honour their expeditious departure from my home, when, lo and behold, more unexpected guests should darken my doorstep! Really the price one must pay for being fashionable, desirable and oh so popular. All the same the identity of one of my guests almost made up for the complications – and the unfortunate necessity of vacating my delightful lakeside property tout suite.

Sparrow's daughter; it was odd watching the nubile young thing gyrating about hacking sundry nasties to pieces while looking simply splendid in a fetching pale lavender gown; reminded me rather forcible of my dear friend the late queen. I was actually quite pleased the little minx survived my _homage_ to the Crucible of old Westcliff. There is something quite invigorating about standing in the presence of another hero; gets the fires burning and the juices flowing, and such like. I'm rather hoping the little wench manages to oust her brother from the throne. I do so enjoy a bit of excitement after all and if she's anything like her mother…well, I did quite well out of that association let me tell you, even if my first meeting with Sparrow was a little, shall we say…rocky. Still the old queen was a good sport about that little Shadow Court sacrifice debacle, so I am confident that the little princess will be able to overlook a trifling attempt to kill her.

Ah! But it is times like these that one is reminded of how good it is to be alive.

Still as entertaining as I'm sure you found this little titbit of news, it is not what you wished to read about is it? I apologise for delaying the epic retelling of my own embattled youth, but I have always believed a bit of titillation demands to be shared with one's nearest and dearest, and I must confess to feeling quite warmly disposed towards you, my dear reader; perhaps because I have no fear of ever meeting you?

But! I have procrastinated upon this page long enough and a tease is only a tease so long before it becomes quite the bore, so we shall return to the tale forthwith. Onwards friends, let the carnage commence!

"Oi yer rotten wench - that hurt!"

The boy floats back to some semblance of awareness with almost languid slowness. He cannot feel his limbs and strange liquid warmth pervades his being, similar yet at the same time quite different from the wild fire fevers that regular afflict his frail form. Alike because he is overly warm when he has the feeling he should be cold, yet unlike his usual fevers, this particular sensation of drowsy warmth lulls and cajoles him toward deep, unending slumber. It is a struggle to force his eyes open.

"Norm, don't be a knob, just bash her 'ead in wit' this rock."

At first the lad can see nothing, or at least nothing his frozen brain can make head nor tails of. The red and orange dance of flame contorts and twists around the capering silhouettes of three figures. The two larger forms circle and harry the small one in the centre akin to wolves circling downed prey.

"Get away from me!" Sound is distorted as the poor lad's ears are as frozen as the rest of him, yet a child knows the sound of his mother's voice like none other. All the same it takes a moment to equate the bloody, battered heap of stained night clothes and slush soaked hair with the image of his mother the boy has enshrined within his mind's eternal eye. Initially all he sees is a thoroughly beaten woman being molested most indecently by two brutish men. He sees the woman bite and kick and thrash in a filthy furrow worn into the snow. He sees one of the brutes cock back a meaty fist and strike the woman across the back of her neck by the delicate join of skull and vertebrae. He sees the woman fall limp to the snow.

After this our hypothermic lad sees only red.

"Mam!" Through the night a child wails, a sound most hideous; hideous and pitiable. It will only occur to the boy years later via the wonderful filter of nightmares that this scream is torn from his own throat. In that time and place however there exists nothing but the exhilarating kaleidoscope of blood, fogged breath and a flurried rain of fire. The boy does not stop screaming even as he launches himself forward, a fistful of bloodied nails in one hand and madness substituting for the strength he lacks.

"Oi, Greg, the whelps not dead yet," In the face of a rampaging small child more ice-sculpture than warm flesh, the two bandits are singularly unimpressed. The first stands before the child slack jawed and supremely confident in his dull-witted cruelty. The second does not even bother to stand up from the woman he mounts against her will, kneeling in the dark snow like a beast.

"Then slit 'is throat an' stop statin' t'bleedin' obvious y'twat."

"Heh, alright," the first bandit lunges forward, knife sweeping lazily. The child moves with surprising swiftness around the inexpert knife swipe. The bandit, too stupid to realise that this is no ordinary child snickers and stabs sloppily. "This is gonna be fun – urk!"

Five nails imbed themselves in the man's thigh, the child having threaded the nails between his fingers like claws and now he drags his fist upward so the nails trail five, inch-deep runnels through the man's flesh from just above the knee to just below his hip.

"Get off her – get away from my mam!" Our violent little hellion does not even feel the clout around the head as he yanks the nails out of the man's leg and aims a spiked punch towards the man's groin. The howl as soft, dangling tissue punctures and deflates is immensely gratifying. Forgetting all else save the extremity of his own distress, the thug collapses into the snow in a near foetal ball, clutching at the ruins of his family jewels. Our murderous young protagonist, all afire with the desire to protect his dear beloved _mam _snatches the man's dagger from his hand and wheels around towards the last man.

"What the fu -!" the second brigand, preoccupied as he was, had no time to do much more than whip his head around, face contorted hideously and flushed puce from his disgusting exertions, before the appropriated bandit's knife finds a comfortable home through his bulbous neck. Blood fountains upward and outward as the child wrenched the blade back out and the scalding wash of crimson near burns his face as he is liberally covered in the stuff. Joshua shoves the dead man off his mother's limp form utilising a wellspring of strength the origin of which the child cannot even begin to imagine.

"Mam?" The child's strength leaves him with the abrupt and unpleasant swiftness of water rushing out of a holey bucket. He falls to his knees and, small hands shaking, grasps his mother's night gown sleeve, shaking her arm. "Mam…please Mam…wake up."

The arm he clutches is thin as a winter stripped tree branch and sways lifelessly in reaction to his desperate manhandling. Somewhere in the rest of the world the church is still burning, the snow still falls and the dull wisps of cascading embers tumbling from the sky reflect with obscene clarity in the glassy panes of his mother's unseeing eyes, yet for this child there is nothing but the immediacy of his own horror.

"Mam?"

Blood has dried as a dark paste across his mother's face, congealing around her shattered nose and torn lips. When the boy tries to lift his mother's head he feels something wrong and broken about her neck and her head lulls against her shoulder unnaturally. He cries out, a strangled sickened little noise and the body drops to the snow. His mother's dead eyes stare apathetically up at him. Small guttural whimpers escape the boy's lips in a continuous, almost mindless mewling. He begins to scramble backwards through the snow, choking on screams he no longer has the breath to release.

"…nonononono…"

All his short life Joshua has considered himself engaged in a one-on-one battle of wills with the grim spectre of death. The pitfalls of his own mortality have dogged his every pained breath and stumbling step for almost as long as he can recall. On the rare occasion he has seen his reflection (mirrors being something of a luxurious rarity in Oakvale) he has seen death lurking in the dark hollows of his gaunt cheek bones, the shadows rounding his sunken eyes and the greyish pallor of his skin. In all bitter truth death has been more of a presence in his life than Father Terrence, the only father he has known, and he had begun, with the wonderful self-absorption possessed of all children, to consider death his own personal cross to bear. He realises now that Death is far bigger than he is and this is no war. This is a massacre. Death has stolen from him his mother and left him alone in a world ablaze and thrown into chaos. If his mother can be defeated by the reaper so easily what chance is there for him, with one foot already in his premature grave and every breath a battle?

Running through a graveyard, the very territory of death itself, the boy flees. Before him rears up an inferno of skeletal remains, the church nothing more than a hollowed out husk of char-wood and flame. The roar of the fire echoes the pounding of his heart and the twisting eddies of ember and snow dazzle his eyes, yet the boy runs on, knowing as he does that Death chases his heels. He can still feel the weight of his mother's empty eyes upon his back. He will forever remember the feel of her dead flesh against his hands and the sickening looseness of her dangling head upon her poor broken neck. Death is abroad this night, riding roughshod over the tiny lives of those the boy loves, devouring as the all-encompassing cold of night devours…and there is nothing the child can do to stop it.

Heedless of all save the wild tumult of his mind, the child falls crashing to the ground, sliding over slurries of brown leaves and slicked ice. He careens head over feet and gashes his forehead against the plinth of an angel whose broken stone fingers point down at him in silent accusation. As blackness speckled red with the blood pumping freely from his scalp conspires to drown out the world the boy thinks he can hear Death's rasping laughter echoing from two hundred cold and lonely graves beneath him.

_All flesh is grass, all life wheat to the chaff, _the child hears the dry intonation of his nemesis in his mind, _No man may conquer me, for I am that which conquers all. _


End file.
